The rise of artificial intelligence in the modern information society has revolutionized the way we store and retrieve information. However, issues such as judgment, value neutrality, and human marginalization are important issues that we need to continue to think about.
Today, we live and breathe in an overwhelming amount of information. It is not an exaggeration to say that we live in an information stream, and our lives in the 21st century are inextricably linked to the aggregation of information. People unconsciously send and receive information, and in the process, information penetrates our lives in various forms. The size of information databases and the way they are stored and retrieved have changed with the times and the purpose of the information society. From being transmitted orally, the written word was introduced to record information over time, and in the modern world, the numbers 0 and 1 can be used to express and transmit any kind of information without limitation. While the language underlying the way information is stored and communicated has been simplified, the amount of information we can access and manipulate has increased, and with it, the utility of information. And to increase utility, the way information is retrieved has also changed to make it more accessible. The emergence of artificial intelligence is the most notable development in the modern information society. There is a widespread opinion that the emergence of artificial intelligence may mark another information revolution in homo sapiens society. Let’s take a look at the changes in the way we store and retrieve information to reach the modern world of the 21st century to understand the paradigm shift that A.I. will bring to the modern world.
First, let’s take a look at the role information played in pre-modern societies and how it was handled. The pre-modern era can be divided into two main periods based on when writing appeared. The first, before the advent of writing in human society, was a time when Homo sapiens recognized a sense of community and developed communities. In tribal hunter-gatherer societies, information was directly related to the survival of the species, so the types of information were limited to safety from threats and food security. Information was transmitted orally, requiring the speaker and listener to be in the same time and space, and information was the intangible link that bound hunter-gatherer communities together. This information had a limited lifespan, dependent on the presence of a disseminator.
With the Agricultural Revolution, the Homo sapiens community underwent a massive wave of change. The long-term nature of agriculture forced humans to think about the future, and information needed to have a longer lifespan. As the amount of information being dealt with increased, a system called “writing” was invented, and it was the establishment of a writing system that made this possible. These writing systems evolved to record different types and large amounts of data. A complete writing system also includes numbers, which can define quantitative concepts. With the advent of writing, information was freed from time constraints and could be accumulated, increasing in volume and complexity.
But at the same time, it also increased the inefficiency in terms of information withdrawal, i.e., is the specific information available at the right time? Character-based storage and accumulation has only increased the size of the information repository, which makes it difficult to find the right information for a specific purpose. This is where we see the paradox of using a writing system to store information, which was introduced to overcome the limitations of our brain. Unlike the human brain, which is an organically connected spider web of finite amounts of data, the infinite amount of visible information was organized and categorized in drawers. This was a huge barrier to information withdrawal, and humans were seen as failing to evolve as a species as information users. Ironically, it was again the written word, specifically numbers, that solved this problem of information withdrawal. With the invention of the computer, information stored in a virtual space, the Web as we know it, was connected in a network based on the binary number system of zeros and ones. It is often said that people in the 21st century live in a so-called “information deluge,” meaning that humans have been freed from the constraints of information withdrawal and are in a position to access and use information at will.
From there, humans invented artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is the idealized intelligence created by machines. This means that the process of storing and retrieving data, which has always been the responsibility of humans, has been delegated to a non-human entity. That other entity is the product of the science and technology that humans have achieved as a result of civilization. Because of its plasticity, the scope of AI’s use is beyond our ability to predict, as its potential for development is limitless. At this point, it can be interpreted that humans have reached the peak as information users. However, A.I.’s positioning as an information user has significant implications for the modern information society.
First, the decision-making process loses the authority to determine which judgment is best. The process of coming to a conclusion about a problem involves all the information that is relevant to the field. Based on the information available, different options are analyzed from different perspectives, and the one that most closely approximates the intended outcome is finally chosen. When AI is introduced to store and retrieve information and use it in the decision-making process, it is unclear whether the decision-maker will be a human or an AI that will mimic human thinking. In addition, since A.I. is far more advanced than humans in its ability to use data, it can be more accurate than humans in drawing conclusions. Therefore, we shouldn’t ignore the possibility of a time when the criteria for determining the suitability of a solution to a problem will shift from humans to AI. When humans introduce A.I. into the solution process to find a solution to a problem, it is unclear whether the criteria for the problem that A.I. has established on its own will meet human purposes and whether the conclusions of A.I. will be in the direction that humans intended. And since humans are the ones who evaluate the utility of the best judgment, which is influenced by each judgment, it is a phenomenon where the purpose is subverted by the result. Especially if the decision to be made has a subjective value to humans (e.g., happiness, which varies from person to person) or is directly related to the survival of the human race, can humans trust the judgment of an AI over their own species?
Next, and as an extension of the previous reason, is the failure of AI to preserve value neutrality. In Homo sapiens society, nothing was more variable than the value of information. Humans were the ones who determined the value of information, and this value was strongly influenced by their needs and goals. From a purposive perspective, information is created and destroyed, and until the advent of A.I., humans were the main actors in the storage and withdrawal system and the use of information. A.I. also emerged from the use of information. A.I. must be given guidelines for judging value in its own way, and developers are involved in this process. This is how the value of A.I. is realized by developers. It is the developers, or humans, who program these value judgment criteria into the AI. The type of value that the developer prioritizes, whether it is an industrial logic that prioritizes profits or a moral logic that emphasizes legal systems and ethical issues, establishes the value judgment criteria for A.I. If A.I. develops in the direction of having the ability to judge and multiply itself according to the input values, it is not expected that A.I.’s value judgment will lead humanity to prosperity. Since A.I. is a product of human capabilities, the criteria for judging good and evil, right and wrong, beauty and ugliness will eventually come from humans, not A.I. itself. Therefore, there is no such thing as a completely value-neutral AI.
Finally, the marginalization of humans by A.I. should not be overlooked. Although it is a product of science and technology developed by humans, the capabilities that A.I. will have can be said to be an example of blueprinting. Since A.I. has an advantage over humans in storing and retrieving information, it is obvious that it will be able to overcome the physical and mental limitations of humans and become superior to humans in many ways. One example is the defeat of Lee Sedol, the top human Go player, by AlphaGo. Lee Sedol, a world-class Go master, was easily overwhelmed by AlphaGo, an AI that has tens of thousands or even hundreds of millions of patterns and strategies built into it. If A.I. is adopted not only in games like Go, but also in industries, productivity that surpasses humans by a factor of two is guaranteed. At the current rate of development, the scope of AI’s use will be wider than just games like Go. While the economic logic of making a profit makes sense, the introduction of A.I. marginalizes many workers from the workforce. Humans are left behind and marginalized by the products of their activities solely because of their inferiority in productivity. Furthermore, if AI were to replace humans in various social institutions, such as culture and law, it would shake the very essence of what defines the Homo sapiens species. Humans, who have been the developers, will be reduced to being merely the result of development, and the species, which has been able to sit at the top of the ecosystem due to its unique higher mental capabilities, will be plunged into the quagmire of the fundamental question of what defines a human being as a human being.
In the modern information age, a fluid society that is constantly reshaped by waves of information, artificial intelligence is a hot potato. When AI emerges, capable of processing information with unimaginable speed and efficiency, no one can predict whether it will be able to operate within the scope of human prediction. From the dawn of humanity to the 21st century, the way we store and retrieve information has changed, interacting with and influencing the social structure of the time. With the advent of AI, whether it will take Homo sapiens to another peak as a user of information in the modern information society, or whether it will plunge us into the depths of a huge mountain, is a question that humans who develop AI must keep an eye on. In my opinion, AI should ultimately be a product for humans.
